Vulcan's Forge (35 page)

Mercer followed him into the ship. The unitarian gray walls and stark lighting reminded Mercer of the basement of his grandparents’ house in Vermont. The steel corridors were spotlessly clean but smelled of fuel oil and saltwater. Quintana led him up three decks and through a maze of corridors, to his office. Had Mercer not been used to the three-dimensional labyrinths of underground mines, he would have been thoroughly lost.

Quintana’s office was small, but on a ship which housed more than 5000 men, space was at a premium. The walls were covered in cheap paneling and the carpet on the floor was thin but a definite upgrade from the steel passageways. Quintana’s desk was wooden, standard government issue. In fact, it reminded Mercer of his own desk at the USGS. Since he believed that a clean desk was the sign of a sick mind, he assumed Quintana was indeed touched. The only items on the desk were a lamp, bolted to its surface, and a black, three-line telephone.

“The head is through that curtain,” Quintana pointed. “You can leave your flight suit in there.”

“Thanks.” Mercer smiled his gratitude and headed for the bathroom.

A few minutes later he was seated in front of the commander sipping the coffee that Quintana had thoughtfully poured.

“The captain would have met you himself, Dr. Mercer, but he really doesn’t like you boys in the CIA. Quite frankly, I don’t like you, either.” The distaste in Quintana’s voice was hard edged.

“I’m glad we have that cleared up,” Mercer replied with a grin. “I don’t like spies either.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you’re with . . .”

“The CIA,” Mercer finished his thought. “No, I’m with the USGS.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Quintana said cautiously.

“The United States Geological Survey, Commander Quintana,” Mercer said with a smile. “I’m a mining engineer.”

“It’s bad enough using a navy jet to transport civilians, but this is ridiculous,” Quintana said acidly. “You’re just an engineer. What the hell is this all about, Dr. Mercer?”

The commander’s arrogant attitude triggered Mercer’s temper. “Don’t act as if you had to pay for that flight yourself, Quintana, all right? I’m on a mission so far over your head, the people involved read like a who’s who, and I don’t recall any of them giving you permission to act like some simpering prima donna. As far as I’m concerned, your ship is just an airport where I’m changing planes, so stuff your holier-than-thou attitude, I’m really not in the mood.” Mercer wouldn’t normally have been that short with Quintana, but the tension was building within him and he needed an outlet. Besides, the commander was acting like a prick. “Your job is to get me to the assault ship
Inchon
, nothing more.”

Quintana’s eyes narrowed in rancor as Mercer spoke. “Fine, Dr. Mercer. It’s 0430 now, first light in another two hours or so. A helicopter will transfer you over to
Inchon
then.”

“That’ll be fine. In the meantime where can I get something to eat?”

Quintana stood, his anger locked behind clenched teeth. “I’ll take you to the officers’ mess.”

“By the way, tell the captain that Admiral Morrison sends his regards,” Mercer said lightly as they left the office. The casual remark about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was puerile, he knew, but the bulging veins on Quintana’s forehead gave him a fiendish pleasure.

E
vad Lurbud always woke angry, even after a short nap. Anger was an integral part of him as much as his dark eyes or his powerful arms. It was an unfocused emotion, wild, yet so very important to him. It was the only thing that gave his life any meaning. If he could somehow vent just a little of that anger every day, then he knew he was alive.

As he swung his legs off the cot, he wondered what he would be like if he ever woke and found all the anger had finally left him. It had been his constant companion since the days of brutal beatings by his father and the intimate touches of his mother and aunt. He guessed if he ever woke without it he would put a bullet into his forehead.

The other bunks in the dim safehouse were occupied by his team. The bed above Lurbud sagged under the weight of Sergeant Demanov. Their snores were almost deafening.

Because the team had arrived only a day before Lurbud, he knew it was prudent to give the men a chance to acclimate to the Hawaiian time zone. The men had to be fresh this evening when it was time to move out. He glanced at his watch—6:30 p.m. He had been in Hawaii a little over twenty-four hours and now, as he stretched his muscles, he knew he was ready.

In one corner of the safehouse, two members of the team were playing endless hands of gin, trying in vain to alleviate the boredom between their scheduled two-hour reports to the
John Dory
. When they saw Lurbud looking at them, they came to immediate attention. Lurbud smiled and waved them back to their seats. He turned back to the bunks of sleeping soldiers.

“Gentlemen,” he said softly.

With fluid grace, the men woke and slid out of their beds, coming to attention automatically. Their response was so instantaneous that even Lurbud was impressed. Sergeant Demanov broke rank and strode across the room to Evad. He was naked, yet showed no self-consciousness. His chunky body was covered in a thick pelt of hair.

“Not bad, eh?” Demanov asked, grabbing a cigarette and lighter from a table.

“Are you talking about your troops or your shriveled manhood?”

Demanov let out a deep belly laugh, smoke shooting from his nostrils in twin jets. “Best fucking troops in the world, they are.”

Lurbud smiled. “I think this time even you are not exaggerating, Dimitri. I want them ready to move out by 1930 hours. It will take us at least an hour after that to get into position around Ohnishi’s house.”

“Have you given any thought to my plan?”

“Yes, this afternoon when the rest of you were sleeping. I don’t think it would be a good idea to split our forces. We don’t have the communications gear to coordinate a simultaneous attack against Ohnishi and Kenji. We will hit them in turn. With luck, Kenji will be with his master and the second operation won’t be necessary. It is critical that we maintain our scheduled contact with the
John Dory
. If she’s not waiting for us when we reach the coast, well, you know the consequences.”

While Sergeant Demanov and his team checked the equipment and weapons that had been smuggled into the safehouse months earlier through the Russian embassy’s diplomatic pouch, Lurbud scanned the reports given to him in Cairo.

Ohnishi’s mansion was protected by twenty guards, all of whom had military or police training and had attended numerous professional defense schools. These guards were better trained than most nations’ elite defense forces. Lurbud had no doubt that his troops could handle them, but there he would certainly lose men. Ohnishi was old, wheelchair bound, and frail. He would pose no difficulty once the guards had been eliminated.

Kenji, on the other hand, was different. Lurbud had no plan of his house, no details of his security arrangements; even his personal details were sketchy. He was fifty-four years old, but the attached blurry photograph, though taken only a year earlier, showed a man who appeared twenty years younger. Kenji was a master of kendo, tae kwan do, and several martial arts that Lurbud had never even heard of.

A note from the KGB compiler who had put the dossier together stated that Kenji had mastered the art of nonweapons. He could use simple household items to kill or maim. The note explained that a similarly trained assassin had once slit the throat of a Hungarian dissident with a sheet of paper torn from a London phone book.

Lurbud sincerely hoped that they would catch Kenji at Ohnishi’s. Heading into an assassin’s lair without any tactical intelligence was tantamount to suicide.

At 7:30, Lurbud and his men left the safe house after checking that they had left no incriminating items behind. Despite the curfew, they left the city unmolested in a van that had been stored in a garage nearby. If Honolulu survived the crisis, the only evidence that they had ever been there was an empty barracks-like room and an abandoned van, both rented by Ocean Freight and Cargo months earlier. And since the break-in at the New York offices, OF&C had ceased to exist.

FORTY-FIVE miles away, the cooling breeze of evening was washing across Takahiro Ohnishi’s glass-and-steel mansion. Ohnishi, seated in his wheelchair on the open balcony high above the rolling lawns, nodded solemnly as Kenji explained the current situation throughout Hawaii.

“Though it has been four days since he was killed, many of the National Guard units still believe that their orders are still coming from David Takamora; they don’t know that Honolulu’s mayor is now dead. MacArthur Boulevard leading to Pearl Harbor is blockaded by students armed with hunting rifles and fully equipped guardsmen. The airport is now closed to all traffic and the buildings have been evacuated except for mercenary guards I hired. The runways are blocked with airport maintenance vehicles that won’t be moved without orders from either you or me.

“The microwave relay stations are also closed and guarded and the main phone cables have been seized. Hawaii is essentially isolated.”

“Has there been any resistance from the media?”

“Yes,” Kenji replied, glancing at his watch. “The local heads of the networks are demanding some sort of interview with Takamora, preferably live, to calm the fears of the general population. One has threatened to start broadcasting reports about the violence to the mainland if Takamora doesn’t appear soon.”

“How do you plan to deal with him?” Ohnishi did not sound too concerned.

“As soon as he leaves his studio, I have an agent ready to take him out.”

“Good. How violent are the streets right now?”

“From my men stationed in the hospitals, it seems maybe two hundred dead, around five hundred injured so far. Most of these are random acts like the ones seen in Los Angeles in 1992. Gangs of youths beating innocent people, vendetta retributions between gang members, that sort of thing. Some of the victims are those we’ve specifically targeted. Of our list of three hundred possible threats, eighty-six are confirmed dead, but many more have probably been eliminated. I don’t have confirmation from our agents yet.”

“It disturbs me that we have not heard from Suleiman about our arms shipment,” Ohnishi said suddenly.

Kenji did not reply, but his gaze darted furtively to the face of his Rolex.

“Those arms are supposed to be here in a few hours, and we don’t know what type of planes will be flying them in or the recognition codes the pilots will transmit. If we don’t get those codes, we can’t clear the runways.

“We are approaching a critical point. Soon people will begin to lose their fervor and want the violence to end. We must get those weapons and the rest of our mercenaries. The President of the United States will respond soon, I’m sure. The forces at Pearl may be bottled up for now, but they can be unleashed very quickly indeed.”

“The President wouldn’t dare order those troops to open fire. He’d be risking a sympathetic revolt on the mainland. Every ethnic minority in America would be behind us. Anarchy would reign in every town and street.”

“He has other options, Kenji, an attack against me, for example. He knows of my involvement in this coup. He could target me alone and wait for the violence to die with me. Mobs like this only stay active with someone to control them. If we don’t stay in contact with our lieutenants around the islands, they will quickly lose their fire.”

“True,” Kenji agreed, “and we must also think of Kerikov’s response.”

“I don’t worry about him. His powers are severely limited.”

“But the coup was his idea and was only supposed to happen on his orders. Surely he has a plan to stop it. We are jeopardizing his control of the volcano. He must have a way of protecting it in such a contingency.”

Ohnishi smiled paternally. “You have always only thought of my protection, Kenji, and that is most admirable, but I believe that we are quite secure. There is no way Kerikov can stop us.”

Kenji seemed relieved to hear his master’s confident tone. “What will we do when we can’t produce Takamora to lead the people?”

“Senator Namura is currently hiding outside Washington, D.C. He was my choice to lead the coup if Takamora had refused, so he will become the new leader. He has already accepted the honor. One of my private jets will fly him here as soon as it’s safe for him to move.”

“And Takamora’s death?”

“We’ll blame the U.S. military. Don’t worry so, Kenji, all is working out well. Suleiman’s weapons will arrive along with mercenaries to augment your forces. Namura will probably be here within twenty-four hours to place a stamp of legitimacy on what we’ve started. Neither the President nor Kerikov will have the time or fortitude to launch any major opposition.”

From the corner of one eye, Kenji noticed a dark figure dart across the lawn toward the main house. The first man was quickly followed by two more racing from the shadowed protection of the jungle. Kenji crossed his legs casually, belying the instinctive tightening of his muscles. His hand rested naturally against his ankle.